Answers

There are several avenues for startups to connect with designers. Platforms are dedicated exclusively for design professionals - enviro, theme forest, oDesk to name a few. Depending on your project & size you get work done for a reasonable price.

As long as your are cash strapped, I would reserve equity for employees. Equity serves as a great incentive to grow your company in the years to come.
With that said, I know of tech/dev companies that partner with startups to work for equity until they can be paid at a future time

CTO can be an important leadership hire for a company. As it continues to grow CTO adds value to help scale the technology & platform, dev organization and leadership presence with investors/market.

Your networks are always a great source to find such talent - LinkedIn, Founder dating, Angel List and clarity are few forums I would recommend connecting with prospective tech leaders. In addition, depending on your geographical region there are always great startup and tech events to connect with your future CTO.

In today's mobile app landscape and that too in P2P, there are several players trying to address various use cases. Marketing aside, customers themselves can be great advocates of your product. User experience that delight customers and delivers value will automatically resonate with users. They become your strong advocates. You can the leverage various growth hacking strategies/tools to grow

When it comes to platforms and holding money there are strict regulatory & compliance requirements. As a platform operator you had rather focus on the core user experience and providing value to your users.

There are several payment platforms that will manage your transaction-holds experience ( for a fee) - PayPal, Stripe, wePay are a few I can recommend. These platforms take responsibility to manage the KYC, Risk, Regulatory/Compliance requirements for the transaction and associated holds experience.

Especially with online fraud continuing to be on an uptick it makes to rely on the experts. Happy to provide further advice if needed

First off, congrats on building a business that creates value and growing customers. Based on your description, the current agency based model seems more one of full-service, you may have a good feel on how much your current customers value the model.

With an agency model, the customer trusts your service and subject market expertise to give them the value they are seeking. It also allows you to charge based on the customer, complexity of project, resources needed, skillset etc.

In regard to the market place model, customers are usually looking for flexibility in pricing and also in situations where they are fine with identifying the writer, project managing it. The platform serves as the connector between both parties and helps manage the experience through services to post requirements, manage feedback & communication, payment, reviews etc

Few recommendations:
- Try the marketplace model as an alternate tier for customers that would be open to managing it themselves
- You facilitate the engagement via the platform and take a cut of the transaction from both parties
- It allows you to see how customers choose between either model & make a decision before pivoting.

Each model has its own advantages & challenges. Look at a few marketplaces such as envato, fiverr etc that have accomplished the marketplace model.

There are lots of resources today where you can cost effectively build a MVP for a b2b platform without needing to raise lot of funding. In most cases ( as long as you have a great network of investors) you will probably need to have already developed an MVP, validated the product/service offering before you approach. Depending on the kind of B2B platform, you might be able to leverage existing frameworks to help build an MVP.

I have had lots of experience in B2B & B2C platforms and would be happy to share thoughts/feedback.

There are several platforms that support a marketplace for digital content distribution & sales. Bringing together consumers (for the content) and content creators. Example: Fiverr, Themeforest, Envato etc

It is a very interesting and highly evolving space with lots of opportunities to solve problems for both parties

I have had experience building digital platforms and am very familiar with the space. Happy to connect further if you need more guidance

For any Marketplace platform to function & grow well both sides of the user base needs to be developed in tandem. Initially depending on the service the Marketplace is trying to provide, it is important to focus on users that will provide the service.

Uber: Drivers, Clarity: Experts, eBay: Sellers, UpCounsel: Lawyers etc. At the same time these service providers need optimum infrastructure, tools etc to showcase their services in order to attract consumers. Once you have a good number of service providers, you should begin promoting & targeting consumers. Without consumers the two-sided marketplace will not function.

Though you can begin focusing on the consumers later, it might make sense to begin targeting a small sample of users so they serve as initial users/beta testers of your two-sided marketplace.

Hope this helps. Happy to connect further over a call to get into specific strategies.

While you are considering bringing all the Content Marketing & Measurement features and capabilities together with Project Managment ( I am
assuming some type of cohesive management Dashboard with combined analytics ?), you might want to consider the following:

- the integrated product should not make it a challenging user experience overall
- is this something the customer/client needs, do you have relevant feedback to validate such a move ?
- what might be the benefits to the platform & users by such a change

It is hard to comment regarding APIs without more context on your goals. I have leveraged publicly available connectors & API modules to connect CRM, marketing automation and payment functions successfully.

There are legal, regulatory and risk implications to retaining and handling funds as a marketplace.

The good thing is with marketplace platforms becoming more mainstream, the payment solutions ( such as Stripe, BrainTree, WePay etc) have also evolved to support their unique needs/services provided.

Depending upon your marketplace model you could choose to just transfer funds to the Seller minus your fees/commission OR hold onto funds (for a certain period) giving your users the ability to withdraw funds upon their choosing.

The payment solutions you choose vary by the use case, and the solution providers take responsibility for legal, regulatory and risk implications.

I have experience in payments for maketplaces and would be happy to share more feedback and suitable solutions over a call.

Reviews

Suresh was super knowledgeable on the topic (payment solution) and helpful! He gave several real life examples to explain his points of view which made it easy to understand. Would gladly reach out to him again for more questions!

My call with Suresh was very helpful. He understands the SaaS landscape well, and was able to provide good insight and perspective into potential synergies and partnerships that can help grow our business. I definitely recommend Suresh for anyone requiring advice in the SaaS arena.

Suresh understand product and early stage startups. He is warm, approachable, insightful, resourceful and genuinely cares about your project. And you need Suresh on your team! My co-founders and I are working on a new mobile app startup venturing into the art industry. Suresh is not familiar with the art industry but within a few minutes during our discussion, Suresh grasp our mobile app concept instantly and the rest of our conversation was very insightful. Suresh is straight to the point, he doesn't waste time with fluff. He helps us stay focus on what is important now while advising us to think about future goals for our product. We are so fortunate to have Suresh as our advisor on our mobile app startup project. Suresh have definitely helped us focus and saved money, time and precious resources. Many thanks for your valuable guidance Suresh. I hope you will be lucky enough and have the chance to work with Suresh so you can see first hand how awesome Suresh is.

Suresh is a great collaborator, and together I felt we accomplished wonderful things at PayPal. As a product manager leader, his enthusiasm and ambitious goals inspire his teams to redefine rather than refine. Suresh balances competing demands on his time with aplomb and is always ready to make the call. I look forward to our next collaboration.

Suresh is able to navigate risk policy, legal, alongside customer needs and functional requirements and can translate them all into appropriate product requirements for a team to develop against. He is a team player willing to roll up his sleeves to collaborate and design/ execute a well developed product.

Suresh is "la crema della crema" of the many product managers I have ever worked with in my career. He has deep knowledge of his vertical and is always prepared with background, requirements, and a vision for the future of his product. Suresh has a great understanding of how best to use the resources he is given, and is also open to new ways of working as a team. He has high expectations of others, of himself as well, and is a tremendous help as a mentor. I recommend Suresh and would certainly work with him again.

Suresh takes a common sense approach to Product Management. His technical knowledge and intellectual curiosity leads to well thought out options and solutions. He combines a passion for excellence with a calm demeanor that exudes confidence with his coworkers at all levels. Suresh is highly collaborative and open minded Product Manager.

I’ve known Suresh for more than 6 years and there is no one I would rather have on my team. Suresh is extremely unique because he is both technical and strategic. He pays attention to every detail without losing sight of the big picture. That attention to detail and his ability to understand the competition and position a company for success is why Suresh is so valuable to any organization. I have never seen Suresh fail.

I'm honored to work with Suresh - as a mentor guiding me to deliver a complex and most awaited high profile product for the company and as a cross vertical product champion who helped us to deliver the ideal product for our customers. And, we succeeded!!! Now, this is the standard that my company is following and leavarging my product as free of cost for the future initiatives. Suresh is strategic and always makes sure the business initiatives are aligned with the company's long term goals and also taking care of the success of his sub-ordinates. He helped me focus on my strengths, provided me the right direction when needed and kept me motivated under difficult circumstances. He is culturally aware, very easy and fun to work with and work for. Everyone loves to have suresh on the team, as a mentor, manager, leader, and a friend!” Getting an opportunity, I'd love to work with Suresh again without any hesitation.